If there was ever any doubt that Canadians are much different from our southern neighbours . . . yes, including the ‘u’ in neighbour . . . here’s a reminder from Texas and the attorney general of that state who refers to himself in today’s press release as “General Paxton.”
AUSTIN – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today spoke to a crowd outside the Texas State Capitol about the importance of protecting marriage, as defined ... Read More …

It’s been a very good year for author Thomas King and it firmly establishes the 71-year-old as one of Canada’s pre-eminent writers. On Tuesday, he was awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction for his novel The Back of the Turtle, while earlier this year he won the B.C. National Non-Fiction Book Award and the Charles Taylor Award for The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America.
Full disclosure, I was ... Read More …

Another of Warren Jeffs’s followers has gone to jail. Jeffs is the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who is serving a life term in a Texas jail for sexually abusing two girls.
The latest convict is Nathan C. Jessop, 49. The Associated Press reported that on Tuesday, Jessop was sentenced to 90 days in jail after pleading guilty to abusing boys who were sent to Idaho on a ... Read More …

Bruce Wisan was appointed by a Utah court to safeguard property owned by the polygamous sect headed by the jailed pedophile/prophet Warren Jeffs. But soon, Wisan will be in criminal court as well.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Wisan has now been charged with “patronizing a prostitute” in March 2013. It also reports that the Utah attorney general’s office is considering whether to remove Wisan from the job of special fiduciary. Wisan’s pretrial conference ... Read More …

Earlier this week, I questioned why the de-facto legalization of marijuana has been done in Vancouver without citizens being involved in the debate. I had a few emails from people saying that debate happened years ago with at the federal level, which is true. But the Criminal Code remains unchanged and it doesn’t seem right to me that it should be local police and the unelected Vancouver police board members who make the decision.
With ... Read More …

In 2017, Emily Carr University will leave Granville Island and an enormous amount of space that offers the opportunity for something really wonderful (or possibly something really terrible) to happen there. The people who work there are focusing on the positive and they’re asking for people to help them “reclaim and celebrate the original, founding vision of this unique public space.”
The founding principle for the federally owned island was that it would “provide a ... Read More …

There are those among India’s ruling class who fail to recognize that rape is always a crime. If nothing else, it helps explain why not enough is being done to enforce the law.
On Thursday, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which rules India, said: “This [rape] is a social crime, which depends on men and women. Sometimes it’s right, sometimes it’s wrong”
According to Reuters, Babulal Gaur, the minister responsible for law ... Read More …

When Reza Moazami testified in March in B.C. Supreme Court against multiple charges of sexual assault, procuring a person to become a prostitute and human trafficking, claimed he didn’t know anything about most of that. He did admit — as National Post writer Brian Hutchison wrote — that he was “a steroid-popping drug dealer who ‘worked with’ almost a dozen, young, female prostitutes until his arrest in 2011.”
As for some of the other evidence ... Read More …

Trinity Western University’s law school was given the go-ahead by the Law Society of British Columbia Friday, but it still has several more hurdles before its graduates will be accepted across Canada for articling positions and the chance to become members of the various provincial bar associations.
TWU has already received approval from the B.C. government and the law school at the faith-based university in Langley was also approved by a special committee of the ... Read More …

By a vote of 20-6, the benchers of the Law Society of B.C. approved the accreditation of a law school at Trinity Western University on Friday.
The overwhelming vote of support for the evangelical Christian college’s law school came despite many of the benchers — as the society’s directors are called — using words like hateful, mean-spirited, discriminatory and offensive to describe the anti-gay covenant that students, faculty and staff must sign and help enforce.... Read More …

A day ahead of the Law Society of B.C.’s debate on whether to on whether to accredit Trinity Western University’s law school, the Law Society of Upper Canada held the first of its two debates.
According to Yamri Taddese, a blogger for Canadian Lawyer magazine, the majority of the benchers (as the society’s directors are called) spoke against accrediting TWU because it requires students and staff to sign a covenant that prohibits same-sex relationships.... Read More …

It’s always hard to know what motivates people. But I’ve been writing about Winston Blackmore for a decade and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes him tick. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he is just a guy who’s trying to be helpful. But it’s a rare person who would risk jail for that.
Here’s my column that offers some suggestions for why Winston Blackmore admitted under oath in Utah that he’s had ... Read More …

Canadian fundamentalist Mormon leader Winston Blackmore admitted under oath late last month in Utah that at least 10 of his 26 wives were under the age of 18 when he ‘married’ them in religious ceremonies.
Three of those child ‘brides’ were 15, another was 16.
Blackmore had voluntarily gone to Salt Lake City to give a deposition in a civil case that involves property held by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day ... Read More …

Close to 300 submissions have been received by the B.C. Law Society in advance of its April 11 meeting to decide whether it will accept the credentials of graduates from a law school at Trinity Western University.
The meeting will be open to the public and Trinity Western will have the opportunity to review the submissions in advance, provide a response and any other information that it would like the benchers to consider before making ... Read More …

For decades, Japan has been a black hole when it comes to parental child abduction. Children taken from Canada by a Japanese-born parent are almost impossible to recover even if the left-behind parent has sole custody orders from a Canadian court.
I’ve written dozens of columns about some of those left-behind parents going back almost a decade. Most recently, I have written about Masako Suzuki whose son was abducted by his father from their West ... Read More …

After my column this week calling for the B.C. government to improve both the legislation governing municipalities and its oversight of them in light of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s egregious behaviour, I had an email from Port Coquitlam Councillor Michael Wright.
Wright was on council when former mayor Scott Young was charged with assault — a charge he eventually pleaded guilty to.
Wright wrote to say that he supports the kind of changes to the ... Read More …

There are few more heart-wrenching stories than those of parental child abductions. Forget the emotional dynamics that drive ex-wives and ex-husbands to use their children as weapons in an ongoing war. The greatest damage inflicted is on little kids, which is why for the past 35 years all but Japan among the developed countries in the world and dozens of others have signed on to the Hague Convention of Child Abduction.
The convention requires signatory ... Read More …

Last week, I was at Queen Alexandra School when Grade 2 students were excitedly trying on donated Halloween costumes. The problem was that there weren’t enough and in enough different size to ensure that every child at this inner-city school in Vancouver would have a costume to wear.
And what that meant is that this year, like last year and many before, some of the students at this inner-city school would either go out trick-or-treating ... Read More …

The Cambodia Daily’s Simon Mark and Phorn Bopha have done some very good reporting on Somaly Mam and her foundation. It reveals that a young girl who was coached to tell French television an untrue story about her rescue from a brothel to push donations. When I was in Cambodia in November 2010, I also spoke to two women who told me their stories of being rescued by Somaly Mam.
Their stories were published as ... Read More …